Manuel Antonio

Most incredible lodging of the trip. Hands down.
Do you see that there are no walls? No glass or screens in the windows?
Truly a jungle bungalow.

It turns out that there is one small drawback to an open-air home.
The neighbors just let themselves in.

The first night we arrived we enjoyed some delicious mango smoothies and freshly made quacamole. We listened to some music, told some stories, and then headed to bed. Just as we were drifting off to sleep we were startled awake by a thundering crash coming from the other room.

Aimee's freshly made quacamole and Kylan's mango "batidos".
Definitely a late-night snack I could get used to!

Kylan yelled out, "Rich, you good?" and when Rich replied, "that wasn't you?"

we knew we had a visitor...

The shredded bananas and tipped over propane tank were the only clues.
Although seeing how easily our visitors came and went affirmed our suspicions that whoever shredded the bananas on the counter had opposable thumbs!

Friend or Foe?
This pair sat in a tree about 5 feet from our back window.
In over 30 minutes, they never moved.
Manuel Antonio is THE National Park of Costa Rica. When you see a postcard of a Costa Rica, chances are that it came from Manuel Antonio. We were greatly looking forward to the abundance of wildlife, jungle flora and fauna, and of course, the tropical sunshine.
Instead we were informed that Manuel Antonio National Park is closed every Monday. One guess which day of the week we were there. It sure would have been helpful if this certain bit of information could be found anywhere!

We parked as close as we could to the parks entrance and decided we would just try to see as much as we could from right outside the park. We were greeted by these friendly monkeys who were very interested in Kylan's cheese-its!

The entrance to the park is just past this clump of trees. This maintenance worker was kind enough to give us the name of his buddy who happened to be working at the entrance gate just on the other side. We were able to sneak just inside the gates and were able to get a couple of incredible pictures of the most iconic beach in all of Costa Rica. We'll post those when we get them...

Instead of getting to hike through the beautiful national park, we had a relaxing day of reading, gathering shells, and enjoying the local version of shaved ice - he literally used a razor to get shavings off a giant block of ice!

The boys played in the waves for hours, but I was content to just lay on the sand, enjoy my book and watch the hundreds of hermit crabs scuttle across the sand.

A WWII bomber in the middle of the Central America jungle?

Turned into a high-end restaurant?
More than not getting to tour Manuel Antonio National Park, our only regret of the day was that we didn't have time to eat inside the bomber!
Next stop, Dominical!